Old reviews – Top 10 Most Violent Games

James / April 17th, 2011

In the school newspaper, sometime around 1995, my friends and I tried to compile a top 10 list of the most violent video games. We didn’t know much, and remember, the internet was in its infant stage. It wasn’t until a few years later when I’d first get access to AOL. Judging from different magazine articles like GamePro, we tried to make our best conclusion. How accurate do you think it is? And how does the list change today?

Also, I tried to compare different versions of Mortal Kombat 2. If I were to do this today, I could do a much better comparison.

Is awesome. The fatalities are awesome and the controls are actually very similar to the snes, despite only having two buttons. As far as you saying there is only 1 fatality, you were misstaken. Silly high school james, did you never fight on the bridge and impale your oponents on the spikes below? and did you never do the uppercut fatality into the spikes on the ceiling in that level with shau kahn on the background? Oh well, no harm no foul.

Violent video games of 1995? well I’d say braindead 13 should have made the list! But maybe it wasn’t out yet since it didn’t come out for 3do until december. So actually, forget I said that!

By the way, has anyone seen the mortal kombat legacy series online yet?

“Maybe coming sometime….in the near future I mean I dunno, it could be a month from now or two years….or even ten years….but by then you’ve probably forgot about this little paper and you’ll be off in high school or college and having a life and well so would I and…..”

Its weird how tame Mortal Kombat 2 seems compared to games like God of War and Prototype. If done today, I don’t think any Mortal Kombat would rank unless the list was 40 or so entries long or if quantity of kills didn’t count for some reason.

Dude, I played MK2 on my SNES all the freaking time back in the 90′s. Baraka was my most favorite character to choose from. I loved impaling my opponent on his “arm spikes” as a fatality. And, until I read your review, I never knew that the Sega version was missing so many sound affects or secret codes. I’m so glad I never bought a SEGA.

Was the “Genesiss” version of MK2 really missing all of those sound effects? That’s the version I had and I don’t recall that… maybe I’m thinking of MK1, or maybe I just don’t remember. It was half my life ago.

I think that Time Killers was awesome! I can remember as a kid it was only at the movie theater game room. I’d generally say “I have to pee” and get up and dump 2 dollars worth of quarters in it. I can’t remember if it had the moves list printed right above the joysticks or not.

You man need to make a new list soon, maybe increase the list from Top 10 to 25 or so.

Nice list! Only Killer Instinct isn’t on it. Was it not out yet that year? But yeah i remember the snes MK2 blowing all the other console versions away. Glad we see eye to eye. (P.S. I’d be willing to play you on PSN’s MK2! or anyone really. ( K DUB 134)

@Dave Greacen If I remember right, Thrill Kill was supposed to be released around ’98, so about three years after this was supposedly written.

The 1986 arcade game “Chiller” was also really gory (but probably a bit before James’ time when he wrote this), involving you blowing apart zombie and people strapped to all sort of torture devices. There was an unlicensed port on the NES, and I think it was even banned in the UK at one point.

Night Trap wasn’t that violent =/ it’ll probably bore you to death though, it’ll be great if you do a review on that, I know you have but I remind it was just a small thing part of the Sega CD collection.

List probably be like this today: (in no special order)
Manhunt 2 (whichever one got banned)
Dead Rising
Dishwasher (XBLA game)
Catherine
Dante’s Inferno (or God of War.. they basically the same kind of game)
Gears of War
Possibly the new Mortal Kombat coming out soon, since its going back to it’s old roots apparently.. I bet there still be some disappointment there though.
Dead Rising 2
Resident Evil series
Ninja Gaiden 2 (360 version)

There is probably a better list, these are just ones I have played.. except Manhunt, I just know of it being one of the most violent games of today.

Actually James is correct. Looks like the video you posted had someone insert the sound that was needed. Look at more video’s for MK2 gameplay, for example there’s one called “Reptile Playthrough” and everything James saud was correct in that it just said “Fight and Finish Him/Her”…

And when you do the fatality it doesn’t make the sound it does as the screen turns black. Once it’s done and the Fatality word shows up, you just hear the droplets of blood.

Can’t really trust anything you see online anymore as things could have been edited whether it’s sound, pictures, or videos…

Night Trap looks innocent at first, but it turned pretty sick later in the game.
One modern game that shocked me with its violence was the Wii version of Manhunt 2, because the way motion controls are used for kills can occasionally give you a sick “what have I become” feeling.

All of those games suck so bad now. But even back then primal rage blew dick. I remember king of fighters in the arcade wasn’t too bad. The arcade machine was cool because it had two games: king of fighters and some really cool arcade style baseball game. There was also a Jurassic Park sit-down shooter game where you were riding in a car shooting shit. I got kicked out of the arcade for screaming profanities at the dinosaurs while blowing them away. That and the arcade manager was jewish and I made my high score initials JEW and told him “hey some look at this” then he called mall security lol.

idk…at the time i thought Time Killers was pretty violent…even more so than the mortal kombats… the fact that you could gore your opponent by taking an arm off and the game still continues always shocked me. The days of that kinda brutality are long gone.

Night Trap above Wolfenstein? Not so sure about that one. but whatever, you were a kid. And I’m trying to put myself back at that age and think of what I would have chosen. I think time killers would have been higher, but I’ve never played way of the warrior, spear of destiny, or bloodstorm-so I can’t really say.

Isn’t it funny, how back then there was so much controversy about blood and gore in a few games and now everywhere you look (in games) theres blood and gore and we think nothing of it. F U Tipper Gore!!!! YOU LOSE!!!!!!!!!!

I don’t know if I would say Nazis, but fucknuggets, definitely. It’s always the politicians who are the first to encourage “moral decency”, but those same politicians are the first to get caught cheating on their wives, drug use, cheating, etc etc. It’s laughable. So they pick on poor old gaming industry to stop plaguing the minds of the youth. If the apocalypse is coming in 2012 then guess who’s getting the blame……….that’s right………..BRUCE FUCKING WILLIS!!!!!!!!!

@Michael Stanfield Well , James already mentioned that he hadn’t bought on the SNES so I guess that the other people didn’t have it either , he was saving for the ever-so-delayed killer instinct on N64 .Well anyways it’s fun seeing how games evolve and seeing that review on the various platforms of the MK combat game was nice reading and i laughed at the “It’s an 8-bit system, so don’t expect much from it.” I don’t know why maybe because I love gameboy so much .And as for now I«d say the goriest /funnest game ever is L4D2 i just love that game

yep if this is 95* I would say hells yes MK2 was the bloodiest game at that time. I spent alot of 94-95 in arcades setting Quarters up on the MK2 machine waiting to play the winner . but don’t you remember playin that cabinet with the Neo Geo games like the 4 diff games you could choose from. I would always play some Samurai Showdown!! that game should of been in the list. James you are one hell of a guy, I would love to have kicked it with you back then. and deff now. And mother fucker Mike!! same for you bro!!

I never got the chance to play Mortal Kombat on the arcade, but was it just as hard!? Good God! I still go back and play the originals and find it troubling to even get past the first guy!
Back then Mortal Kombat was the first violent game I ever played. So seeing that for the first time was EPIC. And now I think it would be hard to conduct a list of violent games for 360 and PS3. My whole library now is 70% M rated games. Because those are the best ones! lol

Guys, don’t give James crap about this. He’s just sharing some of his older reviews and opinions before he got into the career of reviewing professionally. He was pretty young when he wrote these, as he stated, and remember he also said that the internet was in it’s infant stages, so there wasn’t a lot to compare it to, other than games they had played and magazine articles similar to the subject he was typing about. Don’t be so hard on him.